October 9, 2000 Allstate Arena, Rosemont, IL
setlist : Release, Corduroy, Grievance, God’s Dice, Animal, Red Mosquito, Nothing As It Seems, Given To Fly, Wishlist, Elderly Woman, In Hiding, Even Flow, Light Years, MFC, Lukin, Not For You, Better Man, Leatherman, Nothingman, Do The Evolution, Insignificance, Black, Parting Ways enc 1: Sleight of Hand, Soldier of Love, Crazy Mary, Jeremy, Rearviewmirror enc 2: Soon Forget, Baba O’Riley notes: A raucous crowd and a band in great spirits, Mike covering his ears during ‘Corduroy’ signifying the loud crowd. Lots of between chat among the band. ‘Even Flow’ is phenomenal, with Stone nudging Ed to look over while Ed is looking at Matt, with Matt and Mike playing off of each other toward the end, almost like a “who can top this” thing and Stone and Ed applauding them both at the conclusion. Matt starts off ‘Light Years’ and Ed talks for the first 12-16 bars and it is restarted when he’s finished. He tells how the song is about a person native to the Chicago area and how that person made the sun brighter for the people of Chicagoland. Lyrics are changed to “for they still miss you here” rather than “you seemed to like it here.” Ed talks about the Alpine show the night before: “Waking up this morning, it was hard to believe that last night actually happened.” Later he says he thinks the temperature (26 degrees) matched the number of thousands of people that braved the temperature. ‘Lukin’ (intro’ed as “another quiet one about a guy who likes to drink beer”) and ‘NFY’ are practically one song. ‘Parting Ways’ is a very pleasant surprise, closing the long, long set that Ed earlier notes “it’s not a set in a stone, concrete process, but we usually go about 17 songs or so before taking a break … it seems, by my count, that we’re at about 22 right now … are you guys still with us?” He notes that after surviving last night, they just want to keep playing. Ed passes his wine bottle around with the crowd during ‘Crazy Mary’ and Mike throws a few bars of Jimmy Page’s ‘Stairway to Heaven’ (Zep) solo into the song. ‘Rearviewmirror’ is an unbelievable extended version. Ed gives a long exhortation before ‘Soon Forget,’ urging fans to attend the Nader rally the next day (they were even selling tickets to the rally at the show) and he’s sporting a Bush/Cheney sign with a huge black X through it on his monitor. He discusses the debates and how “one here and one here” are really coming from the same place but Nader provides an alternative He says the next song is for the “richies … like the ones in the sky boxes” pointing to a sky box in the middle right, continuing, “I see there is alike a light blue neon light in the sky box … they must have a lot of cocaine in there (laughing).” Ed stops the song because of the clapping (again), hushing everyone so “the rich would get the full effect” and imitates bad clapping by clapping his hand against his leg and stomping his foot off-beat saying, “See, the rich can’t even keep time.” And ‘Baba’? Light full up, whole crowd visible and screaming, Stone goes nuts, Jeff does an Irish jig for Mike, Ed breaks a tambourine and gives it to someone in the front, gets another one and tosses it to those behind the stage. Band is full on and the crowd is wild, up and loudly singing with every song.